In Articles of Visitation we meet with minute inquiries respecting parish churches; but many of the old fabrics must have been in a miserable condition, if we may judge from complaints made in the diocese of Winchester; it being said that “some in late times were totally ruined and demolished, and those of them still standing were much decayed and out of repair.” The Bishop, in pursuance of an Act of Parliament, united some of the parishes, “for the encouragement of able ministers to undertake the care of them.”[259] The cost expended on the church at Euston, in Suffolk, is mentioned as “most laudable,” in contrast with other Houses of God in that county, which resembled thatched cottages rather than “temples in which to serve the Most High.”[260] Even cathedrals were badly furnished, and in sorry repair. “Are the uncomely forms,” asks the Bishop of Durham, in 1668, “and coarse mats, lately used at the administration of the Holy Communion, for such persons as usually resort thither, without the rails, taken away; and others more comely put in their place, and decently covered, as heretofore hath been accustomed? And are the partitions on each hand of these forms, under the two arches of the church next the said rails, well framed in joiners’ work, and there set up for the better keeping out of the wind and cold, which otherwise do many times molest and annoy the communicant?”[261] [Sidenote: WORSHIP.] It was required that in every parish church there should be a stone font; a comely pulpit, with a decent cloth or cushion; a carpet of silk, or some decent stuff, on the communion-table during service; and a fair cloth for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper; also a cup and flagon of silver, chests for alms and for registers; and it was also ordered that in churches there should be placed the Book of Canons, a Book of Offices for the 30th of January, the 29th of May, and the 5th of November, a copy of _Jewel’s Apology_ well and fairly bound, and a record--in which strange preachers should write their names in the presence of churchwardens. Notwithstanding the careful and repeated inquiries made respecting such matters in Articles of Visitation, it is highly probable that they were often neglected.[262]